The title's kind of misleading. Proving that the patch was medieval doesn't prove that the Shroud is "ancient". It just leaves the question open.
Unless the shroud gets up and walks on water, no matter what the date, it still doesn't prove that the image is Jesus. To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?
In the very least, the radiocarbon dating of the re-weave repair work sets the very LATEST possible date for the shroud itself; in other words, the shroud would already have to exist, and be old, at the date of the fringe re-weave. If the re-weave was performed in the 1290s, that means that the shroud is significantly older. It doesn't tell us how old it is, but it sets the "latest possible date." And that, in and of itself, is significant.
Is it the burial shroud? I don't think we can say. IF they ever let a test be performed on a portion of the shroud that wasn't subjected to re-weave work, and if that material dates to the 1st century AD, we still couldn't say -- for certain fact -- that it is the burial shroud of Jesus. However, it would make such an identification not only possible but, indeed, rather more likely than not; It would pre-date the relic-mania period of Christianity by almost 300 years.
"The title's kind of misleading. Proving that the patch was medieval doesn't prove that the Shroud is "ancient". It just leaves the question open. "
Actually it begs the question regarding the credibility of those who did the first test. I have no vested interest in the status of the 'Shroud'.